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McQueary says he felt abandoned by everyone at Penn State except Paterno

Updated on October 21, 2016 at 8:34 PMPosted on October 21, 2016 at 2:05 PM

McQueary

Jury selection for a potential trial of former Penn State assistant coach Mike McQueary's whistleblower claims against Penn State is expected to wrap up Tuesday. The trial, if it goes, is set to start Oct. 17, in Centre County Court.

BELLEFONTE -- More than ever before, Mike McQueary was telling us how he really feels about what went down at Penn State in the Jerry Sandusky scandal. And this time, as he pursues damages from the university that used to employ him, it was deeply personal.

Holding close to Joe Paterno, McQueary at several times during testimony Friday morning that was always riveting, voiced bitterness at his treatment by the school that, in reality, was his career home for his entire adult life.

That anger nearly exploded when McQueary described what it felt like to receive leave papers the week after Sandusky's arrest that instructed him to stay away from all Penn State football facilities.

McQueary was banned, he remembered thinking. But the pedophile he helped convict, "who was convicted on 45 counts, they let him go around there for years after they knew. And not once, but twice.

"That's wrong.... It made no sense to me and it still winds me up. I'm sorry, but it's not right," " a seething, red-faced McQueary sputtered through clenched teeth.

That was just one example of how Friday's testimony seemed far more personal than McQueary's other trips to the witness stand. He praised Paterno several times for, in his view, being one of the only Penn Staters who had his back - even as many of the late, legendary coach's most ardent fans saw McQueary as the man most responsible for Paterno's firing.

Telling jurors why, for example, he reached out to the Attorney General's office the day after Paterno's firing to see if he could issue a statement explaining his role in the case, McQueary stated:

"I was already getting a sense that my minutes and hours are numbered as a coach with Penn State,... and the only one who had given me any kind of reassurance, or any kind of support, was Joe," McQueary said. "And obviously, he didn't do that in a public way.

"There was no one from Old Main. No one from the board of trustees. No one from of a higher level in the athletic department."

McQueary also recounted how, during what would become Paterno's last practice as Penn State's coach, the two of them had a small side conversation - one that, ironically, was captured by news photographers. "You didn't do anything wrong," McQueary recalled Paterno counseling him, even as his personal Rome was burning.

But, the old coach added, "Don't trust Old Main. And make sure you have a lawyer."

There are good reasons for McQueary to get personal.

His testimony Friday comes in a case in which he is seeking $4 million in damages from Penn State for what he claims are several reputation-killing actions taken in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal that McQueary says have shut coaching doors to him across the country.